Produce slicers are commonly used in today's food supply and preparation service industries. In previously developed produce slicers, the article of produce, such as an onion, is pressed through a set of radially oriented blades, thereby slicing the onion into wedges, typically into six sixty degree wedges. After the onion is sliced into wedges, the onion is further processed by a series of rotary blades which further randomly slice the onion wedges into smaller pieces.
Although previously developed produce slicers have been found effective, they are not without their problems. First, the slicing process takes two steps; first a wedging operation, and second, a rotary slicing operation. This two step process is time consuming and expensive. Additionally, since the rotary blades randomly cut the article of produce, the resulting cuttings are random in shape and size. This is often disadvantageous since most consumers prefer cuttings of uniform shape and size. Further, inasmuch as the rotary blades randomly cut the article of produce, the cuts may not be selectively oriented. For some articles of produce, this may not be of concern, however for others, for example onions, this may be unsatisfactory. More specifically, onions comprise a plurality of spherically shaped layers, each layer having an inner and outer protective skin protecting the flesh of the onion disposed between the inner and outer protective skins. When randomly cutting an onion, the protective skins of each layer are disturbed, thus exposing the flesh of the onion to air. The exposure to air oxidizes and decomposes the flesh at an accelerated rate, thus decreasing the shelf life of the onion by leading to the premature spoiling of the onion cuttings.
Further still, the random nature of the cutting of the rotary blades often results in a significant portion of the produce cuttings having pointed or sharp ends. The pointed/sharp ends have very little mass, and therefore, when cooked, heat more rapidly than the main body of the cutting. The rapid heating of the pointed/sharp ends often causes the ends to burn, resulting in a damaged and unanesthetically pleasing cooked product.
Also, the random cutting of the article of produce results in a high quantity of fines and slabs, a fine being too small for use and a slab having a length to width ratio that does not meet specifications (typically a wide, short cutting).
Thus, there exists a need for a produce slicer that may fully slice an article of produce in fewer steps, with less cell disruption, with a reduced amount of sharp and/or pointed ends, with increased uniformity of size and shape of cuttings, with a reduced amount of fines and/or slabs, that is inexpensive to manufacture, reliable, and meets the performance expectations of the end user.